Critical Motions

Overview

Team

A persuasive legal brief can end a case, dramatically reduce potential liability by eliminating particular claims or remedies, prompt settlement, shape the course and outcome of trial by limiting evidence, preserve an important issue for appeal, or influence a court’s answer to a legal question of first impression. It can change the substantive law applied, or change the math on damages.

Motions and briefs can make a big difference. So we brief differently.

Our practice group dedicated full time to critical motions specializes in deploying effective, appellate-quality briefs at key stages of litigation, including dispositive motions, Daubert challenges and other evidentiary motions, briefs opposing punitive damages, and motions for directed verdict. We work early and closely with clients and other trial team members to provide the legal research and analysis that shape case strategy and to ensure that the plan for critical motions informs discovery. We tailor briefs to the judges who will decide them. We present scientific and technical evidence, complicated issues, and nuanced facts and legal arguments in plain English. We translate essential but complex concepts—truck EDR data, the science and diagnostic limitations of neuroimaging techniques, the physics underlying calculations of vehicle-accident and injury-threshold forces, real-world constraints on theoretical alternative designs—into compelling copy.

Clients benefit from this attention to detail. A recent study finds a “clear association between brief readability and favorable outcomes.” Our favorable outcomes include several recent decisions on motions that each reduced exposure by millions of dollars.